gcthomas
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Or, third option, the universe exists with a natural cause.
Atheists, do you hope you're right?
- Thread starter serpentdove
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Or, third option, the universe exists with a natural cause.
gcthomas
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Yes! Think how much better poetry and art could be if poets and artists had to study physics to a high standard. Their at would have much deeper truths than the simple introspection that most has now.
alwight
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I wonder how many theists truly (absolutely?) believe in their particular god?
There is plenty room for doubt given that only one religious belief is true.
Hedshaker
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Hear, hear :thumb:
PureX
Well-known member
Truth is rarely perceived via 'convincing argument'.
There are no "deep physical questions". "Depth" is a subjective quality assessment of the kind science seeks to ignore.
PureX
Well-known member
Transcendence is a real, physical, phenomena. And yet some people's bias has them so enslaved to material reality that they just can't recognize it. Their own consciousness can't cognate it's own manifestation and it's own transcendent nature. And the more one tries to articulate that recognition, the harder they struggle to ignore it.
What strange creatures we are!
Jamie Gigliotti
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I said the material/matter, for the Hawkingites who suppose matter continually implodes and explodes, to say nothing of dark matter that physicists theorize disappears and reappears. With a suposistion that what created the material and is beyond it and immeasurable by anything in it and thus supernatural. The natural meaning material.
gcthomas
New member
If the alternative is an unconvincing argument...
Clearly wrong. You are obviously unaware of the deeper levels of physics. Your loss.
If transcendence is physical, then it doesn't seem very transcendent to me. You do seem very biased against the physical, so I am amused you think it.
PureX
Well-known member
Not all theists are religious. Not all theists believe in one particular god. In fact, most theists believe there are many manifestations of an ultimate 'god-ness' or divine spirit. Hinduism, for example. Also Shinto. Taoists split into two groups, one with many god-manifestations, and the other with no interest in any gods at all. Buddhists don't necessarily even believe in a "god", but rather a 'divine nature'. Even Christians believe in three very different manifestations of a singular, inexplicable God. Only Judaism seems to stick to the idea of there being only one, true, God. Yet most Jews readily allow that this belief is only true and necessary for Jews, and that for non-Jews this is not a necessary belief: that there are many other ways people to perceive/conceive of God. And nearly all religions hold the tenet of respecting other people's religious beliefs.
It's only a very small number of religious extremists within these various religions that insist on ideological exclusivity.
PureX
Well-known member
Bingo. You simply defined it out of existence. And so it doesn't exist for you.
What a strange thing that is!
As an artist I have long been aware that there are people who hate art. They don't understand it, and they can't appreciate it even though they can see that others do. So they secretly resent it, and they dismiss and disparage it as useless nonsense whenever they can. And there are more of them around than one might think.
This bias toward materialism, and against anything transcendental seems to be a phenomena something similar to that.
How sad for them.
gcthomas
New member
No no no. You should read what you and I both wrote - I was questioning your definition of the trancendental as physical.
You do like to imagine you know what others think and what their motivation is, don't you? You are very presumptuous.
No, I don't hate art and have never implied such a thing. What I have said is that art is not as deep and meaningful as you have claimed. It is very good at expressing views of human nature that it is hard to find words for (and I enjoy and am moved by art for that reason). It is just not good at revealing important aspects of the physical world (and you haven't given any examples to the contrary, so I'll assume you are just blowing smoke here.)
Since I have not said or implied any of those things, I will assume you don't include me in this broad dismissal.
Show me a concrete example of something that you believe demonstrates the reality of trancendental things, and we will have something to discuss. Materialism has many advantages that barely need spelling out, but I'd hate to miss out on actual trancendentalism, so now is your chance to convince ... :up:
This is a very typical response. Though, you ask your question within a biased context and imply this as evidence of your position. All you've really done is demonstrate that you've no interest nor talent in pursuing transcedental ideas and place a higher emphasis on materialism. Which is fine..just don't prop the latter via an inadequate grasp of the former.
gcthomas
New member
So what persuaded you that trancendance is a thing?
Px says that trancendance is a real physical thing - do you agree and what convinced you?
Px has completely dismissed the primacy of the material, so I am sure he has good reasons, and it wasn't just a bias based on his world view. How about you? What idea or experience or evidence convinced you?
alwight
New member
I was fine with the first half of this but I think you are attempting to reimagine other people's gods more in line with your own less than specific "higher power". Individual theists for my money typically like to keep it simple, even a trinity will become one, more below I see...
...The early Jewish God seems to sometimes refer to Himself in the plural and that He and no other gods are to be worshiped. However it seems to me that individual Christians typically pray to one God perhaps with three elements, but I would suggest that gods generally are typically as individual as the individual is.
Tell it to Muslims who think nothing of bombing the other sect's Mosques and their faithful.
Equivocation noted.
Perhaps we agree then that individual theists may or may not follow a religion but will usually hold very individual notions on theistic beliefs. For me that probably makes them all human with an individual innate tendency for being theistic, not that anyone is actually able to intuit the truth by a god receptor or by philosophy. A valid and worthwhile truth is something testable and demonstrable imo, not something plucked from the ether because it feels nice to believe.
PureX
Well-known member
Physically transcendent, yes.
The way the realm of conscious self-awareness transcends the realm of life from which it physically springs. The way the realm of life transcends the realm of matter and energy from which it physically springs. The way the realm of organized matter physically springs from a sea of chaotic energy due to this mystery of limitation. And the way each of these examples of transcendence occur naturally, and physically, and yet each manifests a whole new realm of existence, with a whole new set of existential possibilities that were not there, before.
Recognizing, understanding, and appreciating these examples of actual, physical, transcendence might lead a reasonable person to speculate about the possibility of further transcendental manifestations, perhaps existing in realms that we humans cannot perceive, or that we can perceive only rarely and remotely, like a glimpse of movement at the edge of our peripheral vision that vanishes the instant we turn our heads to focus on it.
Such a realm of existence may not be accessible to conventional reason, or by physical experimentation. And may require some creative mental exercise or training to improve our perception of it enough to verify it's existence at all, let alone explore it.
But "harrumph!" says the doubting Thomas! "That's all just pointless navel-gazing!", right?
As opposed to theoretical physicists sitting around speculating about infinite multiverses and eternal singularities. Right?
All I know of you are the words you post on the screen. I am simply responding to them. If I am misreading, or misunderstanding them, feel free to articulate yourself more fully.
Well, it's not; not for some people. Art is like any other primal human endeavor, the more you learn about it the "deeper" it goes. If you don't know anything about it, then you aren't likely to see much in it. If you know a little about it, you'll see a little in it. Some people have an artist's mind, and temperament, and so they can understand it and grasp it more quickly and fully. And some people don't. That's just the way it is.
It was artists that invented writing. It was artists that invented mapping landscapes. It was artists that invented chemistry. It was artists that discovered visual perspective which later led to the revelation of relativity. And also to photography. It was artists that created musical scales based on the mathematical relationships of sound wavelengths before we knew what sound waves even were.
That's just to name a few things.
And artists were able to do all these things because they practice at looking for new ways of seeing, hearing, doing, understanding, and expressing their experience of being. Artists are natural explorers, that are not confined solely to the physical realm of our existence. They explore the experience of being, itself.
They are the first people the bigots, fascists, and authoritarians of all kinds want to eliminate or control when they begin their rise to power, because it's the artists that act as society's mirror, and allow society to see itself for what it is, instead of what it's pretending to be.
It would be a huge and serious mistake to underestimate the power and effectiveness of the artist's endeavor within human history and experience, and relative to human understanding. It precedes science by eons, and in fact gave birth to it.
When I post observations like that, I aim them at no one in particular. And leave it to whomever read it to decide if it applies to them, and to what degree, or not.
PureX
Well-known member
"Testable and demonstrable" … meaning that "it works" for you in your experience of living in the physical world.
Right?
But we don't all have the same experience of living in the physical world. And we don't all perceive 'the world' in terms of physics, alone. So that 'what works' for some of us in relation to our experience of world does not work for others of us.
For some people, their concept of the 'the world' is far more metaphysical than other people's concepts of 'the world'. So that when they determine what's 'working' for them and what isn't, their criteria is far more meta-physical, than physical.
This, I think, is really why some people are atheists, and some people are theists, and each to varying degrees of certainty and intensity.
Even certain aspects of reality are different for different people. A color blind person doesn't see what I see. And so on.
gcthomas
New member
That is perception, not reality, which is the light is radiation that triggers the retinas, or not, but nonetheless does actually reach the blind person's useless eye. Unless you are suggesting that for a blind person light does not actually exist?